Was your food happy before it was your food?

It’s simple: food can’t give you what it did not receive. And, just as important, it can only give you what it did receive.

Think that through for a moment before reading further.

Food can’t give you what it did not receive.

• Fertilizers are a chemical concoction rather like eating fast food instead of a good meal. So, just as there is some nutritional value in most fast food, eating a well balanced fresh prepared meal made from nourishing fresh ingredients is better. The same is so for soil.
• Fresh air is necessary for any living creature. Yet the majority of chickens and hogs grown in the US (and maybe China) are raised in extremely overcrowded cages or confined in barred pens, breathing the fumes from this fetid, urine soaked environment or a recirculated version of this. If that isn’t harmful or cruel enough, remember that animals have more sensitive nasal passages, sinuses, and capacity for scent than humans. All animals are scent sensitive. As a result, the nasal passages of these caged chickens and penned hogs are in a perpetual state of inflammation. The air they breathe becomes the tissue on their bones which is the meat or produces the eggs you eat. Of course, the inflammation requires a constant stream of antibiotics, so constant in fact that it is now part of the food pellets fed to these penned and caged creatures. The poison that they are subject to becomes the lace poison in the food humans eat unless you are choosing your food and food sources well.
• Freedom is necessary for life. In nature, nothing is imprisoned unless it is being killed such as an insect caught by a spider and imprisoned in a meal cocoon or a host tree being strangled by a creeping vine. Caged animals are raised without freedom. In that completely stressed, putrid, and suicidally depressing environment they are raised to  become food, or lay eggs, or produce young. Their depression, stress induced cortisol,  and other biochemical results that stem from a caged life permeate their flesh, eggs, and offspring. These become human food.
• Right interaction is right stewardship, it produces good karma, and supports health. When in reference to produce, this means understanding that any component of life that is missing from the natural processes of pollination, cross species and multi-species environment is a significant loss to everything in that produce environment. It is like amputation. In reference to animals raised on land or in water for consumption, this interaction includes basic kindness as opposed to cruelty, and remembering that these animals are living beings thus sentient in their own way. The vibration and energy of right stewardship is real, thus its lack is a degradation of the food produced without it.

Food can only give you what it did receive.

Organically grown or pesticide-free produce, free-range or cage-free animals are managed in a lifestyle which is closer to millions of years of life they are biologically designed for and used to. This general well-being plus the vibration of good stewardship that supports their life cycle is received by the end user, you and I. Because our food received goodness in the many ways that it did, that goodness is in the food in all the ways that it is.

Equally, food that was happy before it became our food is not poisoned with chemicals, hormones, antibiotics, nor with cortisol and the internal chemistry of depression, pain, and misery.

Food that received genetic modification, pass on that genetic modification to you and I, to our children, and to our pets if their food is made from GMO/GE grains. If Nature thought that a gene from a fish belonged in a plant, Nature would have done that a long time ago. Animal and human bodies do not know what to do with genetically modified foods. The lab tests on animals are conclusive, regardless of what Monsanto, the FDA, and cohorts say. A simple google search will turn up some pretty gross pictures and shocking information. US citizens are reminded that genetically modified foods are not grown or used for human or animal feed in Europe or Russia overall. I guess the well-being of people and Nature is more important than greed in those places.

Simply, food can’t give you what it did not receive. And, just as important, it can only give you what it did receive. Thus when you or I spend money on food, it is in our best interest to spend our hard earned money on food that is itself healthy thus it will support our health. Food that supports the health is food that was grown or produced with health and well-being in mind. That’s good for everyone.

(The word “you” is being used intentionally in these posts. This subject is a personal one, as in each person has the right to know and then the volition to act upon that knowledge. Using neutral pronouns such as “one” or “us” does seem appropriate to the individual responsibility that each of us has.)

Information. This organization addresses sustainability, peace and right relations, as well as policy making through activism related to organic and green initiatives. It is an outstanding resource. Organic Consumers Association

Video and movies (not gross ones)

• Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviews Michael Pollan.  10 min. video
• Fresh, the documentary. Available for streaming through Netflix or YouTube for a small fee. Worth it! The first 10 minutes makes the case against the unhealthy way, the rest of the film is inspiring.
• Forks over knives – knives being surgery, forks being healthy food (Netflix again)